Something worth noting with regards to this trope is that it used to be
that Billboard required a physical single release for a song to make the Hot 100 — something labels didn't always do. Per the linked article:
What this meant was several popular songs flat out didn't chart for this reason. Take "Fly" by Sugar Raynote for example. At least in America, "Fly" is remembered as a major hit of the latter half of The '90s. But its chart performance
? #1 Radio Airplay (plus #1 on Canada's charts), but not even on the Hot 100 — because there wasn't a single release in the U.S., as stated by the article:
As it pertains to One-Hit Wonder, I'd be in favor of a TRS to change the rules a bit — so that Hot 100/charts in general performance isn't the only requirement.
Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 9th 2024 at 11:54:16 AM
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper WallThe question is whether you're changing the actual meaning of the trope, or merely the standards for what qualifies as an example for us. Are you changing the actual definition, or merely how to enforce it? When the Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard threads were active, would changing their standards for what qualified for those pages have required TRS if it wasn't changing what those pages were trying to capture, only how they captured it?
Again, I could be wrong here, and I was responding to themayorofsimpleton more than you. In my mind, adjusting what qualifies as a chart hit is changing the rules, but expanding beyond pure chart hits would be a definitional change requiring TRS.
I mean, I’m in favor of expanding beyond pure chart hits, so I think a TRS would be appropriate. I was just bringing up an example of how chart hits aren’t everything.
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

So One-Hit Wonder is used to describe a creator—particularly music artists—with only one known successful work. However, the description seems to limit the "hit" as the song being placed on major charts like Billboard, particularly the Hot 100, although I'm not sure if this is a good parameter to gauge examples.
Let's see two hypothetical scenario:
If we're defining "hit" solely by chart placement, the first scenario would count as an example of One-Hit Wonder, while the second is not, although I think it should be the other way around.
Also, I'm a bit wary of many of the genre examples, where there's a lot of "this artist is a major name in their subgenre but only has one song that is a hit 'mainstream'" entries. Just because the majority of their works are only hits within a specific target audience, doesn't mean they're not hits at all.
Thoughts?
Edited by Adept on Nov 9th 2024 at 8:03:08 PM